Up talking and down talking

Some people have the habit of up talking. Up talking occurs when a person’s inflection goes up at the end of the sentence. It makes a statement sound like a question.

A different kind of condition happens in meetings. You might call it down talking. People talk about tactics instead of strategy. They talk about options instead of objectives. They let the conversation devolve into how a thing will get done, instead of being focused on what the objectives are. Most meetings could use more up talking and less down talking. Why are we here? What do we want to achieve? How would we define success? Avoiding excessive down talking takes discipline but it can be an extremely valuable habit.